Hungkat’s
review published on
Letterboxd:

The childish ex-convict, Jong-du, loitering in boredom with no real life direction only to take comfort in the mentally handicapped woman, Gong-ju, who caught his attention. This brutally romantic realism manages to flood the senses. Astonishingly brave performances and articulate direction make Oasis an empathetic soul-shaker.

Watching this is equivalent to the feeling of getting squeezed and crushed by a hydraulic press. A sickening crunch of my body can be heard as soon as Jong-du starts making that tree disappear. Isn’t it lovely? The surging impact of Oasis will leave you deform and decompress. Weepingly sad without melodrama, uplifting with zero trick of manipulation. Emotions are pure and heavy. Lee Chang Dong has done it again with his trademark humanistic cinema. Gong-ju’s imagination of being able to break free from her spastic imprisonment yields such mournful harmony and tears are guaranteed to flow from your seemingly dry eyes. A triumphant blow of trumpet that loudly blasts its humane ode while obliterating the line between misfits and normalities. The cruelty to the outcasts is on display; being spitefully treated like societal burdens, these two detached souls are helplessly abandoned and shunned out. Not giving up, the lovebirds mutually build and bedew in a world of their own - the fantastically exuberant Oasis filled with burning passions, a baby elephant, dancing boy, woman sprinkling petals and glowing kisses . A faint light shines through the dust of day ... Abracadabra, life comes back again.